KUVO (89.3 FM) will make rare changes to its program schedule with the start of 2013. General Manager Carlos Lando said the intention is to expand the public radio station’s locally produced jazz programming into the early evening hours on weekdays in response to listeners’ needs.

Beginning Jan. 6, “First Take with Lando and Chavis” will be extended for another hour, airing 6=9 a.m. “The Morning Beat” with Victor Cooper follows, 9 a.m.-noon, with Arturo Gomez’s “Lunchtime at the Oasis” noon-1 p.m.

“Take Note,” with Susan Gatschet Reese fills the afternoon until 4 p.m., followed by the “Jazz Caravan” with Erik Troe until 6 p.m. “Into the Evening” with Rodney Franks runs 6-8 p.m. followed by “The Night Beat.”

KUVO founder Florence Hernández-Ramos will be honored with a Five Points Jazz Tribute Award for her contributions to jazz, the community and, not least, the radio scene, this Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at the Festival.

The first female Hispanic president of a public radio station, Hernandez held that position for 23 years at KUVO. She was a host of Cancion Mexicana, one of the most popular programs in KUVO’s line-up, for 25 years. She left KUVO in 2007 and has been Executive Director of the Latino Public Radio Consortium.

This year’s Festival (here’s the lineup) , which is always a signal of the start of summer in Denver, also will recognize local music legend, vocalist Hazel Miller. And a posthumous award will be made to drummer Nat Yarbrough.

What’s the future of news now that everyone’s an internet publisher/videographer/broadcaster? News has been with us since smoke signals and it’s going to stick around, but let’s separate what passes for news on commercial outlets and the in the blogosphere from the kind of contextualized take on events that National Public Radio offers. They really do manage a well written, generally smart and classy delivery. Now they’re aiming to sound “more like America” (beyond the Beltway, beyond a certain socio-economic class).

Margaret Low Smith, in town for a public forum on journalism and multimedia newsgathering sponsored by KUNC-FM 91.5, the Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Rocky Mountain PBS and KUVO, uses the polite word “differentiated” to describe the kind of news NPR delivers.

Public broadcasters don’t deal in breaking news–except in obvious major cases (the Aurora theater shootings, the killing of Osama Bin Laden)– but instead focus on the implications of news of the moment. Whether they should be more nimble when it comes to breaking news is a subject of debate.

KUVO on Monday will introduce a new local morning show: “First Take,” 6-8 a.m. weekdays, a mix of music and news. It replaces “The Takeaway,” the John Hockenberry program, which is moving to mid-day and shrinking to one hour. KUVO will no longer carry it.

Score a point for noncommercial, non-syndicated, local radio.

Carlos Lando, COO and program director, will return to the KUVO airwaves with jazz and blues; Steve Chavis, who joined the station this year, will cover the issues with an emphasis on “unheard voices and under-represented perspectives.” (Chavis was at KBCO years ago.)

National news from NPR will still run at top of hour and the show will have access to content from “The Takeaway.” “First Take” will produce local news and features. In fact, Chavis said, as a swing state, Colorado may be producing content for the national show. For starters, the team hopes to provide content from the Oct. 3 political debate in Denver to “The Takeaway.”

John Hockenberry, co-host of “The Takeaway” on KUVO, is coming to town to give an address at Boulder’s World Affairs Conference. To accommodate his schedule– and as a fringe benefit for Denver–he will broadcast the national morning show from KUVO April 6-8.

“The Takeaway,” the upstart public radio answer to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” airs 5-8 a.m. on KUVO 89.3FM in Denver (89.7FM in Summit County and in Vail on the new station KVJZ 88.5FM) .

Hockenberry has always been a smart writer and thinker, a favorite when he was on public radio the first time around, and later in his stints at ABC, NBC and MSNBC.

Hockenberry is slated to deliver the plenary address, “Where Have All the Powers Gone?” at the 61st Annual Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He’s also on a panel talking about the latest trends in media.
Co-host Celeste Headlee will co-anchor from WNYC in New York.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.